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This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Yun Feng in Beijing. Here is the news.
China's largest consumer-to-consumer platform taobao.com has said it will file a complaint against an official at a government watchdog.
It claims the official abused power and ruined the reputation of Taobao's online site as well as that of online vendors in China.
Taobao's decision escalates tension between the platform and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.
In an open letter, Taobao, which is owned by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, accused Liu Hongliang, who is in charge of regulating online trade at the administration, of "using a wrong method and reaching a conclusion that is not objective".
A recent quality report released by the administration showed Taobao with the worst performance among six major online shopping sites.
The quality check, carried out between August and October, showed that less than 40 percent of goods from Taobao that were tested were authentic. This compared with 90 percent for JD.com and 86 percent for Tmall, an Alibaba business-to-consumer site.
According to the platform, at least 51 of the 92 items chosen for the administration's inspection were sampled from Taobao, while just 10 items were sampled from one of its competitors.
Taobao says it had received unfair treatment in the quality check.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
China's high abortion rate has triggered public concerns over sex education for young people, with experts calling for cooperation from health departments and parents to protect young women.
Around 13 million abortions are carried out in China annually, that's according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.
Sixty-two percent of these abortions are performed on women aged between 20 and 29, most of whom are single. Almost 20 percent have had more than one abortion.
Doctors say the actual number of abortions performed is believed to be higher, because the statistics were collected from registered medical institutions and do not include abortions carried out at unregistered clinics.
The number of women under the age of 16 undergoing abortions is growing by 30 percent a year at a hospital in Tianjin.
According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, the government spent 2.5 billion yuan, or around 400 million US dollars on distributing contraceptives during the five years between 2006 and 2010.
Abortions increase the risk of sterility and infection. However, in China, advertisements claiming to provide "painless abortions" are common, sending a message that abortions are an easy way out, with few consequences.
This is NEWS Plus Special English.
Beijing has unveiled a plan to control the number of visitors after dealing with overwhelming crowds for years.
The draft plan sets an upper limit for the number of daily visitors at 80,000. The proposal is awaiting approval from various related authorities.
The museum says it is too crowded during peak season and it has to be responsible for visitors' safety.
The authorities didn't reveal the specific date that the policy will begin, but said it can begin as early as summer. The museum says there was some urgency to the plan in light of the deadly human stampede on Shanghai's Bund on New Year's Eve; and the sheer number of visitors, along with inadequate crowd control measures, caused the tragedy.
More than 15 million people visited the Palace Museum last year, topping all museums in the world. Second on the list is the Louvre in Paris, which saw over 9 million visitors last year.
In 40 days during the peak season last year, more than 80,000 people poured into the Forbidden City
Many methods have been adopted to control the number of visitors, including closing the museum on Mondays, but the results were not as good as expected.
You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Yun Feng in Beijing.
An international team of astronomers combing through data from the U.S.
Kepler space telescope say they have discovered a solar system with five Earth-sized planets dating back to the dawn of the Galaxy.
The parent star of the ancient system is Kepler-444, a Sun-like star formed 11 billion years ago, when the Universe was less than 20 percent its current age.
This is the oldest known system of terrestrial-sized planets in our Galaxy, two and a half times older than our system, which is only a youthful 4.5 billion years old.
The new finding shows that Earth-size planets have formed throughout most of the Universe's 14-billion-year history, leaving open the possibility for the existence of ancient life in the Galaxy.
The scientific collaboration was led by the University of Birmingham and contributed to by researchers from Denmark, the United States, Australia, Portugal, Germany and Italy.
The team determined Kepler-444's diameter and age, using a technique that observes miniscule changes in the star's brightness.
The study showed that Kepler-444 is 25 percent smaller than the sun and is 117 light years from Earth. The star's five known planets are smaller than Earth, with sizes varying between Mercury and Venus.
That discovery may help astronomers learn more about early planet formation in the Galaxy.
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